Stop Being Afraid Your Book Will Offend Someone
I’m going on a rant today, so stay tuned.
I’m tired of seeing posts in my writing group like:
“I’m afraid my book might trigger someone.”
“I don’t think I should publish my book because it might hurt someone’s feelings.”
“I don’t know if I should put trigger warnings in front of my book or not.”
Look, I know that a lot of people try to be kind and considerate, but nobody ever made anything of themselves by being afraid. If you feel passionately about something, write it and publish it anyway. I’m writing a romance book about a high school girl who gets involved with an older man, and I know it’s going to upset a lot of people, because I don’t exactly cast their relationship in a negative light. I wrote it in first person from the perspective of the girl, so of course she’s not going to immediately think it’s creepy that this twenty-something is interested in her. And to be fair, he didn’t know how old she was until it was too late. She, much like myself when I was a teenager, was often mistaken for a college girl. But you know what? I don’t care. I don’t care about what people think of my book. If someone can write something about a thousand year old vampire falling in love with a teenage girl, then my twenty-something isn’t so bad.
You can’t say those types of books aren’t successful either because let’s all just remember Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
And while we’re on the subject, let’s remember The Color Purple by Alice Walker. It was rejected from schools and libraries for being too outrageously sexual, or Ulysses by James Joyce. For a period, all copies of the book coming into the U.S. were burned just because the book had a masturbation scene in it. Or let’s remember that the freaking Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by mark Twain use to be unacceptable reading because Huck’s family was too kind to their slave.
I could go on because there are any number of books which have caused controversy throughout the years, and more than a handful of people became upset at their existence, but you know what? They got published anyway. This post isn’t about just my book, either. It’s about any book. It could be about a book completely condemning the type of book I’m writing. If you are passionate about it, write the book. If you want a chance, even a small glimmer of hope to be successful in the vast ocean of books and publications, you can’t be afraid to be audacious. Not everyone needs to agree with you, and if you’re afraid you’re going to upset some people, those are what back covers are for. They can read the description and if they don’t like it, they don’t have to read it. If they read it anyway and get upset, that’s on them and not you.
Besides all of that, no matter what you write, somebody is going to get upset. Even if you wrote the most neutral, trigger-less novel in the world, somebody would still be offended by it. So quit worrying so much about offending people; it’s taking from the beauty of your work.
Today’s post was short but sweet, but I really feel like this needed to be said. Making it as a writer is hard business, and nobody is concerned about your feelings, so don’t be so concerned about their feelings. Hopefully someone takes this to heart. Write your inner darkness. Go about your books murdering children and framing people for crimes they didn’t commit. Unless you stop caring what people think, the true spirit of your books won’t shine through.